Maximize Your Profits with the Power of Direct Mail Even if you have a brick-and-mortar store, relying exclusively on walk-in traffic for sales is not going to help you reach the level of profit that you might reach if you use more impacting marketing tools. If you’re ready to ramp up your profits, it’s time to consider using the power of direct mail. Direct mail – whether through snail mail or through e-mail campaigns – can increase your business reach. This hard-working, cost-effective tool can communicate news, solicit inquiries, persuade clients to visit your booth at a trade show or your office for a special event, distribute policy changes or new product information, or invite people to call you for quotes; but with so much mail and e-mail cluttering up your intended recipients’ inboxes, how can we boost responses to our campaigns? Boost Responses with the Rule of Reciprocity To increase your responses, you might want to invoke reciprocity: where one feels obligated to return a favor or similar. Think about last Christmas. Did you receive a card from someone not on your “list” of people to send cards to? What was your reaction? Mine usually is something like, “oh, my goodness, I better get a card out to her right away.” I feel guilty for not having put this person on my list – and add her to next year’s list of intended recipients. One could say that the card I receive is a present – a gift of the sender’s time it took to jot a quick note, sign it, stamp it, and mail it. So I am indebted to return the favor – or in this case, the gift of a card. This is our society’s general undercurrent of consciousness at work. Conscientious people feel an urgency to unburden themselves of any debt – even to strangers, numerous studies show. Strangers giving gifts? You may have seen orange-robed Hare Krishna’s in an airport lately. They smile, then they hand passersby small token gifts, changing the relationship of beggar/stranger to one of creditor/debtor. This one change in approach from the old days when they just smiled and begged for quarters has increased the group’s financial status in the United States alone to billion dollar status. So let’s take this full circle: by adding a promise of a gift to your direct mail (or a gift in the direct mail piece, you are invoking the rule of reciprocity. Offer gifts of value and benefit to your clients, such as free reports on how to save time, money, etc., or a low-cost promotional item that has your company’s name on it. When the rule of reciprocity kicks in, watch your response rates double or even triple! How much direct mail is enough? That answer will come in a subsequent article.